Neighborhood

Flatbush

Brooklyn
In the Census-defined PUMA including Flatbush & Midwood, according to recent Census data, (in descending order), Haitian Creole, Russian, Urdu, Yiddish, Hebrew, Bengali, French, "Niger-Congo languages" and "Other Asian Languages" each have more than 1000 speakers. Varieties of English, Spanish, and Chinese are commonly spoken in the area as well.
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Languages with a significant site in this neighborhood, marked by a point on the map:

Akan

Akan
New York is home to a large and growing Ghanaian community centered on "Little Accra" in the Bronx stretching from the Grand Concourse up to Tracey Towers, with Ghanaian English and Twi serving as widely-known lingua francas. Ashanti, Akuapem (Twi), and Fante are all considered mutually intelligible varieties of Akan. Ghanaian New Yorkers from Accra, or who spent significant time in Accra, may be Ga speakers, and in the Bronx community there are also speakers of smaller languages such as Dagaare and Dagbani. The first wave of Ghanaians came to the city after the coup in 1966, with some working with the Black Star Line (Ghana Shipping Company) as seamen, and a large number arriving starting in the 1980s. There are now smaller communities in Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island, New Jersey, and Westchester. Those from northern Ghana may be part of the Yankasa Association, based in the Bronx. Records indicate that many of the enslaved Africans brought to New York in the 17th and 18th centuries may have been speakers of Akan varieties.

Ashanti

Ashanti
New York is home to a large and growing Ghanaian community centered on "Little Accra" in the Bronx stretching from the Grand Concourse up to Tracey Towers, with Ghanaian English and Twi serving as widely-known lingua francas. Ashanti, Akuapem (Twi), and Fante are all considered mutually intelligible varieties of Akan. Ghanaian New Yorkers from Accra, or who spent significant time in Accra, may be Ga speakers, and in the Bronx community there are also speakers of smaller languages such as Dagaare and Dagbani. The first wave of Ghanaians came to the city after the coup in 1966, with some working with the Black Star Line (Ghana Shipping Company) as seamen, and a large number arriving starting in the 1980s. There are now smaller communities in Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island, New Jersey, and Westchester. Those from northern Ghana may be part of the Yankasa Association, based in the Bronx. Records indicate that many of the enslaved Africans brought to New York in the 17th and 18th centuries may have been speakers of Akan varieties.

Dominican Creole (English)

Dominican Creole (English)
The broad term Caribbean English refers to a whole range of Englishes — from highly distinctive creoles to "acrolectal" varieties close to other forms of English — spoken across much of the Caribbean. Beyond the varieties spoken by Jamaicans, Trinidadians, and Guyanese, which are the large Anglophone Caribbean communities in New York, there are also significant populations from Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Bahamas, Dominica, Grenada, St. Lucia, St. Vincent, and the Virgin Islands who have brought their own specific Caribbean cultures to the city. A Caribbean presence in the city goes back centuries, but larger waves started coming in the early 20th century and especially beginning in the 1950s. Today there are individuals from 17 English-speaking nations and territories, with the largest numbers in Brooklyn from Flatbush into Canarsie, but also in southeast Queens and the northeast Bronx. The Labor Day Carnival in Brooklyn is a major annual event that unites all these communities in a common celebration.

Dominican Creole (French)

Kwéyòl
The French colonial presence in the Caribbean resulted in the emergence of a number of related but distinct French-based creoles (or patois). Haitian Creole has by far the largest number of speakers in New York, followed by St. Lucian Creole, but a number of New Yorkers (mostly living in Brooklyn or Harlem) are also Creole speakers from Martinique, Guadeloupe, and French Guiana (all today still overseas departments of France). Today the local creoles are increasingly valued and studied, but metropolitan French nonetheless remains dominant. On nearby islands which were formerly under French rule (Trinidad and Tobago, Dominica, and Grenada) there are also small communities who have continued using French-based creoles, and it's possible that some individuals may be found in New York.

Dzardzongke

वारागुङ
While Loke speakers from Upper Mustang live primarily with other Himalayans across western and central Queens, most Dzardzongke speakers (from Lower Mustang) live in the Ditmas Park area of Brooklyn, primarily in three large apartment buildings around Cortelyou and Newkirk roads, with some now moving to areas such as Journal Square in Jersey City, Richmond Hill, the Bronx, and elsewhere.

Guadeloupean Creole

Kréyòl Gwadloup
The French colonial presence in the Caribbean resulted in the emergence of a number of related but distinct French-based creoles (or patois). Haitian Creole has by far the largest number of speakers in New York, followed by St. Lucian Creole, but a number of New Yorkers (mostly living in Brooklyn or Harlem) are also Creole speakers from Martinique, Guadeloupe, and French Guiana (all today still overseas departments of France). Today the local creoles are increasingly valued and studied, but metropolitan French nonetheless remains dominant. On nearby islands which were formerly under French rule (Trinidad and Tobago, Dominica, and Grenada) there are also small communities who have continued using French-based creoles, and it's possible that some individuals may be found in New York.

Jamaican Patois

Patwa
New York is a major node in the Jamaican diaspora, with the largest numbers living within the Caribbean matrix of Central Brooklyn (where there is now a Bob Marley Boulevard), but large numbers also in southeast Queens and a more predominantly Jamaican area in the northeast Bronx around Wakefield. While American Community Survey data estimates only 8,384 Jamaican Patwa speakers in New York, the same data shows that over 180,000 New Yorkers were born in Jamaica. While many may consider themselves speakers of English, avoiding the distinct Patois (or Patwa) that has developed in Jamaica over the centuries, many are likely to speak or understand Patwa to some degree — with some beginning to value and create in the language.

Khmer

ភាសាខ្មែរ
The Cambodian Civil War and the Khmer Rouge killings under Pol Pot drove hundreds of thousands of Cambodians to flee the country, including roughly 10,000 Khmer who made their way as refugees to the Bronx (home to Wat Jotanaram and other institutions) during the 1980s and 90s, with a smaller community near Watt Samaki, a Cambodian Buddhist temple in Brooklyn. At a time when neighborhoods like Fordham, University Heights, and Bronx Park East saw frequent violence, the Cambodian community — disproportionately young and still recovering from the killings — struggled with poverty and invisibility and many left the Bronx's "Little Cambodia" for other parts of the country.

Luba-Kasai

Luba-Kasai
Luba-Kasai is spoken by a community from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, at least some of whose members gather on a regular basis in the Flatbush area of Brooklyn, according to a younger member of the community whose mother attends the meetings.

Nepali

नेपाली
Nepali in New York is spoken by a diverse range of individuals and communities not just from native Nepali-speaking Brahmin and Chhetri groups, but as a second (and increasingly first) language by significant numbers of ethnic minorities from Nepal's Himalayan north, middle hills, and southern reaches near India. There are also Nepali-speaking Lhotsampa refugees originally from Bhutan (primarily now resettled in the Bronx) and some Nepali speakers from India.

Pakistani English

Pakistani English
Pakistani English, like other South Asian English varieties, developed across three centuries of British colonial presence, with English today serving as an official language of government widely used in all settings (including many middle- and upper-clas homes) as well as an unofficial lingua franca across the country's many linguistic groups. Pakistani English in New York spans all five boroughs and many suburbs, cutting across the country's multilingual communities that collectively speak some 15 native languages in New York. Roughly 60,000 Pakistanis live in the New York metropolitan area, including major hubs outside the five boroughs in Jersey City, Edison and Woodbridge, New Jersey.

Panamanian English

Panamanian English
The largest population of Panamanians in the United States lives in Brooklyn, with roughly 30,000 in the NYC metropolitan area. In the second half of the 20th century, Panamanians formed a substantial community in and around Crown Heights and Flatbush, within the larger Afro-Caribbean community of central Brooklyn. Every fall, the community celebrates Panamanian separation from Colombia with a parade and street fair. Although most Panamanians in Panama are native speakers of a (Caribbean) variety of Spanish, the majority of New York Panamanians are Afro-Panamanians from the Caribbean Coast, for whom a distinctive English variety testifies to a distinctive history.

Panamanian Spanish

Español Panameño
The largest population of Panamanians in the United States lives in Brooklyn, with roughly 30,000 in the NYC metropolitan area. In the second half of the 20th century, Panamanians formed a substantial community in and around Crown Heights and Flatbush, within the larger Afro-Caribbean community of central Brooklyn. Every fall, the community celebrates Panamanian separation from Colombia with a parade and street fair. Although most Panamanians in Panama are native speakers of a (Caribbean) variety of Spanish, the majority of New York Panamanians are Afro-Panamanians from the Caribbean Coast, for whom a distinctive English variety testifies to a distinctive history.

Papiamento

Papiamentu
Papiamento, a Portuguese-based creole used on the Caribbean islands of Aruba, Bonaire, and Curaçao and now with official status there, is reportedly known by a small number of individuals living within New York's wider Caribbean community in Brooklyn and Queens.

Seke

सेके, སེ་སྐད་
At least a few hundred people from Seke-speaking families now live in the city, primarily in a few apartment buildings in the Ditmas Park area of Brooklyn near Cortelyou and Newkirk, where Baragaun speakers also live. Other Seke speakers live near Baragaun/Loke speakers or within the larger Himalayan community in Queens centered on Jackson Heights. Like other Himalayan communities, Seke speakers are well organized with an active samaj (community organization) and with large annual gatherings around July 4 and New Year’s. Seke speaker and ELA collaborator Rasmina Gurung has been working to document the language. Read more here.

Sema

Sümi
Today there may be a small number of speakers of at least 9 different distinct Naga languages — with some also speaking the lingua franca Nagamese — living in New Jersey, Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Long Island, according to Abraham Lotha, who is based in Edison and has been working on Lotha, his own mother tongue. The earliest known Naga to come to the United States was Eramo Shanjamo Jungi, who arrived in 1904 with a family of Baptist missionaries returning from Nagaland to their home in Trenton Junction. Shanjamo, who was Lotha, returned to Nagaland in 1908 and played an active role in the Baptist church in India until his death in 1956.

Sherpa

ཤར་པའི་སྐད་
The Sherpa community estimates that there may be as many as 11,000 Sherpas in the New York area, mostly from the Solukhumbu area of northern Nepal in the region of Mt. Everest (known as Chomolungma), where so many famous Sherpa mountaineers have worked. Though some are in Brooklyn and elsewhere, most New York Sherpas live within a few miles of the Sherpa Gompa, a Tibetan Buddhist temple founded by the United Sherpa Association in the center of Jackson Heights/Elmhurst. Housed in an old church, the temple has become an important center not only for Sherpas but also for the wider Himalayan community. Down the block is another Sherpa community center where the Sherpa's Tibetic language is taught, and there are also efforts to launch an occasional Sherpa-language radio station and create a community hub upstate in Walkill.

Thakali

थकाली
Approximately 100 Thakali speakers from Lower Mustang in Nepal live in close proximity to Baragaun speakers from the same area, with most in Woodside and Jackson Heights (location of the restaurant Mustang Thakali Kitchen) and a small number of others in Brooklyn and the Journal Square area of Jersey City.

Tibetan

བོད་སྐད་
The small Tibetan and Himalayan community around Cortelyou and Newkirk in central Brooklyn may have formed even before the now much larger Queens community. To those outside the community, Cafe Tibet is one of the most prominent landmarks. The Dorje Ling temple on Gold Street in DUMBO is where many in the community worship. (ELA recognizes that the Chinese government's rule in Tibet, where this language is spoken, is disputed.)

Tiv

Tiv
New York's Nigerian population started growing in the 1970s and 80s, accelerating since 2000 in part thanks to the Diversity Visa program. Nigerians from a wide variety of backgrounds—though a significant percentage are middle-class and highly educated— now make up a large percentage of the city's massive West African community, particularly in East New York, Bedford-Stuyvesant, Flatbush, Clifton, and Concourse. Numerous evangelical churches now serve Christian Nigerian New Yorkers, and there are a number of restaurants, markets, and other businesses for the wider community. Community and hometown organizations also represent those with ties to particular Nigerian states like Edo and Akwa Ibom. The multilingualism of Nigerian New Yorkers testifies to the country's extraordinary linguistic diversity, though Yoruba, Igbo, Hausa, and Edo varieties appear to be the most common, with Nigerian English sometimes a lingua franca. Smaller language groups are also present, including some with substantial and well-organized communities: Afenmai, Anaang, Edo, Efik, Esan, Ibibio, Kalabari, Tiv, Urhobo, and likely others.

Zaghawa

Beria
Following genocidal campaigns by the government-backed Janjaweed militias in Sudan in the early 2000s, hundreds of thousands of Darfuri fled to refugee camps in Chad and, when possible, elsewhere. Of the much smaller number who made it as refugees to the U.S., most settled in Iowa and Indiana, from which several hundred left for a small Darfuri enclave in the Kensington section of Brooklyn. All the dozen or so Darfuri languages are giving way to what is now called Darfuri Arabic, which was already making inroads before the killings, but has also been the principal medium of communication among all kinds of Darfuris, in the refugee camps and in exile. ELA worked with the Darfur People’s Association of New York and other groups to record speakers of Fur, Zaghawa, and Masalit, of which there are a small number of speakers in New York but now many more now in cities across the U.S.
Additional languages spoken in this neighborhood:
  • Classical Tibetan
  • Haitian Creole
  • Juhuri
  • Nigerian English
  • Trinidadian Creole
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Flatbush

Brooklyn

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AbakuáAbakuá

Caribbean

  • Cuba flag
    Cuba
Lower East Side

Smallest

Liturgical
AbazaАбаза

Western Asia

  • Turkey flag
    Turkey
  • Russia flag
    Russia
49,800
Abkhaz-Adyge
Wayne (NJ)

Smallest

Residential
Abruzzese (Orsognese)Abruzzésë

Southern Europe

  • Italy flag
    Italy
Indo-European
Astoria

Small

Residential
Abruzzese (Orsognese)Abruzzésë

Southern Europe

  • Italy flag
    Italy
Indo-European
Little Italy

Small

Historical
AcehneseBahsa Acèh

Southeastern Asia

  • Indonesia flag
    Indonesia
3,500,000
Austronesian
Astoria

Smallest

Community
AcehneseBahsa Acèh

Southeastern Asia

  • Indonesia flag
    Indonesia
3,500,000
Austronesian
Elmhurst

Smallest

Residential
AdjoukrouMɔjukru

Western Africa

  • Ivory Coast flag
    Ivory Coast
140,000
Atlantic-Congo
Concourse

Smallest

Residential
AdygheК|ахыбзэ

Western Asia

  • Turkey flag
    Turkey
  • Russia flag
    Russia
117,500
Abkhaz-Adyge
Wayne (NJ)

Small

Residential
AfenmaiAfenmai

Western Africa

  • Nigeria flag
    Nigeria
270,000
Atlantic-Congo
Castle Hill

Smallest

Residential
African-American EnglishBlack English

Northern America

  • United States flag
    United States
45,109,521
Indo-European
Bedford-Stuyvesant

Largest

Residential
African-American EnglishBlack English

Northern America

  • United States flag
    United States
45,109,521
Indo-European
Newark (NJ)

Largest

Residential
African-American EnglishBlack English

Northern America

  • United States flag
    United States
45,109,521
Indo-European
Clifton

Largest

Residential
African-American EnglishBlack English

Northern America

  • United States flag
    United States
45,109,521
Indo-European
Hollis

Largest

Residential
African-American EnglishBlack English

Northern America

  • United States flag
    United States
45,109,521
Indo-European
Edenwald

Largest

Residential
African-American EnglishBlack English

Northern America

  • United States flag
    United States
45,109,521
Indo-European
Central Harlem

Largest

Residential
African-American EnglishBlack English

Northern America

  • United States flag
    United States
45,109,521
Indo-European
Hempstead (NY)

Large

Residential
AfrikaansAfrikaans

Southern Africa

  • South Africa flag
    South Africa
  • Zimbabwe flag
    Zimbabwe
17,543,580
Indo-European
Murray Hill

Small

Community
AkanAkan

Western Africa

  • Ghana flag
    Ghana
9,231,300
Atlantic-Congo
Flatbush

Small

Residential
AkanAkan

Western Africa

  • Ghana flag
    Ghana
9,231,300
Atlantic-Congo
Shore Acres

Small

Residential
AkanAkan

Western Africa

  • Ghana flag
    Ghana
9,231,300
Atlantic-Congo
University Heights

Large

Residential

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